Is Shutterstock Worth It in 2026?

I’ve been uploading content to Shutterstock since around 2019. I first tried submitting content as far back as 2008 but my work didn’t meet the technical requirements at the time. I then lost interest for quite a while but decided to re-submit in 2019 while living in Saudi Arabia, as I had quite a lot of content with a very low level of media saturation. As a result a lot of my content ended up being used for various TV adverts, magazines and news outlets and also for direct email, web and marketing purposes.

I felt at the time it was really worth doing, the time spent editing and writing descriptions etc was paying off, as I had plenty of free or spare time on my hands and I had a lot of content that seemed like it was in demand.

It was kind of fun and also really satisfying and rewarding seeing my content being used commercially and also for editorial use, making me even more motivated to produce extra content for stock media sites. It almost became an obsession, it was my new daily source of dopamine replacing the endless scrolling and instant gratification on social media.

At least I was spending my time producing content that was making money and was visible in the public domain, instead of spending my time scrolling through the endless and pointless nonsense on Facebook or Instagram.

That extra money has helped pay for new gear and has also supported me throughout my period of relocation away from Saudi Arabia.

However, In the last few years I have seen a sharp decrease in revenue.

Shutterstock for many years was providing me with a decent level of revenue. Definitely not enough to live on but it was ok as a side hustle or second income.

In 2020 Shutterstock made big changes to its contributor agreement meaning that loyal photographers and media/graphic artists were likely to see their royalties decrease over time.

Annual reset: The earnings levels now reset on January 1st each year, meaning contributors start at the lowest tier (Level 1), regardless of their past performance.

Percentage-based earnings: Contributors now earn a percentage of the sale price, with rates ranging from 15% to 40% based on their annual download volume.

Lower earnings per download: The new model has resulted in lower payouts per download for many contributors, especially those on subscription plans, though a minimum payout of $0.10 is guaranteed per download.

As a result many contributors started to pull their content from Shutterstock and concentrate on other platforms such as Adobe Stock.

The rise of AI over the last few years has also affected stock media sales and therefore royalties to contributors have started to decrease even further.

On Shutterstock there is an AI image generator and also an AI design assistant. That has surely affected actual photo sales from their stock library. Shutterstock charges a monthly fee for a set amount of image generations. Or an unlimited subscription for only $104 a month. That doesn’t seem like a lot to me, and can’t be enough to support contributors.

What we are being told as contributors is that if our content, that’s available on their platform, is used for AI generated imagery we will be compensated. It’s something known as data licensing.

A data license is a formal agreement that communicates to users what they can and cannot do with a dataset.

Shutterstock’s data licensing is for images and their metadata used to train AI and computer vision systems.

So the content we’re uploading to stock media sites is basically using our work to train algorithms and ultimately produce AI generated content through their platforms.

There are several things to also consider:

Not for portfolio: Images exclusively approved for data licensing are not available for customers to buy on the main Shutterstock site and won’t appear in your public portfolio.

Quality standards: Some images are deemed suitable for data licensing but not of the high artistic or technical quality required for the commercial marketplace.

Earnings: Contributors can earn revenue from data licensing, which appears in a separate “Contributor fund” column in their earnings summary.

With Shutterstock I have started to notice extra royalties within my account relating to data licensing. This has actually managed to steady the otherwise ‘sinking ship’ of Stock Media.

The Shutterstock Contributor Fund, which may show up on your earnings summary within your contributor account dashboard is basically royalty payments for training and generating AI continue with your stock media. When a customer licenses a dataset for AI training, Shutterstock pools the revenue and pays a portion to the contributors whose content was used in that dataset.

Payments for data licensing are generally paid out quarterly on Shutterstock and, I’ll be honest, it can be quite a pleasant surprise to see that extra money land in to your account, it certainly helps to boost your earnings, and it also proves that contributors are being compensated for the use of the imagery whiten AI algorithms.

Another significant change to Shutterstock’s payment pans is the introduction of their Unlimited Fair Usage Policy.

The Shutterstock Unlimited plan now allows customers to access a large amount of content for a very low monthly cost. In order to be able to fairly pay Contributors for the use of original Content, the subscription terms for the Unlimited plan include this Fair Usage Policy.

Only use an Item if you have a valid and live Unlimited subscription and have registered each Item for use.

You must only download Content when you have the intention to use it.

You may not download Content to stockpile or save for later use.

This new unlimited download has had an impact on overall sales and I think has probably hit quite a lot of contributors quite hard as subscribers can now gain access to a lot of content at a far lower monthly cost.

I have seen an almost year on year decline of royalty payments from stock media since 2023.

There’s always some dips in sales throughout the year depending on the type of content you have and where in the world it’s performing well.

However, as you can see from these graphs there was a big jump in royalties from 2021 to 2023 and then a sudden drop almost dragging royalty payments back to somewhere between 2020 and 2021, which is difficult to comprehend considering the amount of time spent editing, writing descriptions and metadata and then uploading the files. This is across multiple sites, which takes even more time.

Now I haven’t disclosed my actual earnings but some months between 2021 and 2023 the payments were actually really good, still not enough to live on, but a nice extra source of income.

I kind of feel like I’m now scraping by with Shutterstock to a certain extent. They have drastically remodelled their subscription plans which in turn has completely changed the business of stock media, affecting thousands of contributors, who are now being paid as little as 10c for an image download.

The type of stock content and media that you create can certainly have an impact on your level of royalties. The majority of my content is related to travel and tourism. There is a lot of editorial and documentary style content capturing and documenting the world around me as I see it. I don’t do a lot of graphics, vectors, icons and still life photography.

I also do quite a bit of drone and aerial photography and video. There is quite a lot of wildlife content in my portfolio as well as landmarks, cityscapes, Timelapse video but mostly travel and tourism related content.

As I mentioned earlier I spent 7 years living in Saudi Arabia around the time when the country was going through a major transformation as the country was beginning to open up to western tourism.

I travelled around the country capturing some of their iconic landmarks and scenic areas. That meant that quite a lot of my photos and videos were in demand and were often downloaded from stock media sites such as Shutterstock. Saudi Arabia was a country that was very difficult to travel to for so many years so therefore the type of media assets I was producing was clearly helping to provide content for news, marketing and tourism outlets due to an extremely low level of media saturation.

Now that the country has opened up for foreign tourism, there are now many more people visiting Saudi, and therefore, creators are submitting more content to stock media sites.

This may have had an impact personally on my overall sales as media content from Saudi Arabia has gradually become more saturated. It’s difficult to say really.

The decline in royalties is most likely a combination of the use of AI tools, a change in subscription business models and an increase in media saturation.

Now, going back to the original question – Is Shuuterstock still worth the effort going in to 2026?

Well the answer is probably no if it’s going to be a way of making a full time income. It’s difficult to know what your royalty payments will be month to month so based on that it really has to be considered a side-hustle or 2nd or even 3rd income stream.

I have a portfolio of almost 18,000 images and over 5,000 video files available on shutterstock and my rate of royalty payments is now decreasing over time.

Having said that I just had my second best December and my best ever November and my second best October since I stared on Shutterstock in 2019, so this might actually be the start of an upward trend of stock media and AI integration.

It’s difficult to say if stock media is a good source of extra income because it’s a lot of work to edit, write description and keywords etc and then upload the files across multiple platforms.

If you have a lot of spare time and have a huge portfolio of really good quality images and video files then why not get them off your hard drives and put them out on to stock media sites, to make a bit of extra money.

If you have a very niche subject or have developed a style, genre or crafted something that is really unique and unusual then I would definitely stay away from stock media as you’ll be far better off trying to sell that type of content independently, and you’ll most likely be able to demand a higher rate of commission for that content.

If you’re living in a western country the overall cost of living will most likely be very high, so trying to make a living from stock media will be very difficult.

But it also depends on the type of stock media you’re creating. If it’s editorial or documentary style content then you may find thats an area that is still very much in demand as AI algorithms can’t replicate real world, news worthy, current affairs and sports events taking place daily. There is also a push back developing against AI generated content for certain industries such as Real Estate, thats worth keeping an eye on.

The good thing about Shutterstock is that editorial imagery is accepted and generally easier to submit and gain approval than compared to other sites. Currently Adobe stock doesn’t allow editorial content, unless you’ve been selected to contribute that type of content.

If your stock media is more illustrative and graphical then it’s possible that AI will replace this in the longer term. AI has the ability to generate logos, icons and potentially corporate or business related branding material.

It’s also worth considering that AI generated content is now here to stay and all major stock media platforms have integrated their some of their stock portfolio for data licensing designed to train AI algorithms, which allows their subscribers to generate their own imagery.

These AI algorithms that are now producing digital content are constantly being fed new information in the form of stock media.

Generative AI is a major disruptor, both posing a challenge due to ethical questions about authenticity and copyright. Media companies are increasingly integrating AI into their workflows to improve efficiency and to create new revenue streams.

So based on that stock media contributors aren’t quite redundant just yet.

According to several sources the stock media industry is predicted to grow, however the nature of the demand changing.

Hopefully some of this information regarding contributing to stock media sites has been of some use.